Nani Palkhivala: The Lawyer Who Saved India's Constitution | EduLaw
EduLaw EditorialLegends of AdvocacyNani Palkhivala, hero of Kesavananda Bharati, gave India the Basic Structure Doctrine that protects the Indian Constitution from absolute power. His story.
EDULAW | LEGENDS OF ADVOCACY Contents Legends of Advocacy NANI PALKHIVALA The Lawyer Who Saved the Constitution The story of the advocate who stood between unlimited political power and constitutional democracy. ⏱ 28 min read 📅 Updated 2 June 2026 ✍ EduLaw Editorial Desk Share Copy Link ★ Bookmark Your Legal Intelligence at ₹1/- a day Full Pro access to Judgment Finder, Exam Buddy, mock tests & weekly judgement roundups. One payment. No auto-debit. Activate 6 Months — just ₹215 → One-time · no auto-debit ever · 7-day refund policy A Life in Nine Moments — tap to expand 1920 Birth in Bombay Born 16 January into a middle-class Parsi family; the surname comes from ancestors who made palkhis (palanquins). 1946 Called to the Bar Joins the chambers of Sir Jamshedji Kanga in Bombay after law college; rise at the Bar is meteoric. 1950s Rise of a constitutional lawyer Co-authors the landmark income-tax treatise; argues early constitutional cases before the Bombay High Court and Supreme Court. 1967 Golaknath Supreme Court holds Parliament cannot abridge Fundamental Rights — the prelude to Kesavananda. 1973 Kesavananda Bharati A 13-judge bench, 68 days of hearing. Palkhivala persuades the Court to adopt the Basic Structure Doctrine. 1975 The Emergency Palkhivala returns Indira Gandhi's brief in protest; days later he defends Kesavananda before a 13-judge review bench. 1977–79 Ambassador to the USA Appointed by the Janata government under Morarji Desai; honoured with doctorates from Princeton and others. 1980 Minerva Mills Court strikes down clauses (4) and (5) of Article 368 — cementing limits on the amending power. 2002 Death Dies 11 December in Mumbai, aged 82, after years affected by what was believed to be Alzheimer's disease. Home › Blog › Legends of Advocacy › Nani Palkhivala There is a question that follows the name Nani Palkhivala wherever it is spoken among Indian lawyers: how did a single advocate, holding no office and wielding no political power, come to be remembered as the man who saved the Constitution of India? The answer is not found in any one courtroom victory. It is found in a temperament — a rare combination of clarity, conviction and courage — applied to the most dangerous constitutional question a democracy can face: are there limits to the power of those who govern? In the spring of 1973, before the largest bench the Supreme Court of India has ever assembled, Palkhivala argued that the answer was yes. The principle the Court accepted that day, the Basic Structure Doctrine, still stands between Indian democracy and absolute power more than half a century later. This is the story of how he got there — the stammering boy who became the greatest orator of the Indian Bar, the tax lawyer who became a guardian of the Constitution, and the advocate who, in the words of a Supreme Court judge, reached "heights of eloquence" that "have seldom been equalled and never been surpassed in the history of the Supreme Court." Chapter One The Boy Who Struggled to Speak Nanabhoy Ardeshir Palkhivala was born on 16 January 1920 in Bombay, in what was then the Bombay Presidency of British India. His was not a household of privilege. As the jurist Soli Sorabjee — who knew him for fifty years — recalled, "Nani Palkhivala was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He hailed from a humble Parsi middle-class working family." The surname itself tells the story of the family's trade: his ancestors made and repaired palkhis , the palanquins fitted to horse carriages, and like many Parsi surnames it became attached to that calling. The defining irony of his childhood is almost too neat to be true. The man who would one day hold audiences of twenty thousand spellbound, and whose voice would shape the constitutional law of a nation, was as a boy afflicted by a stammer. He did not outgrow it by luck. By Sorabjee's account he "overcame it by sheer willpower" — the same discipline that would later define his approach to advocacy. "He was a brilliant student and did extremely well despite his initial handicap of stammering which he overcame by sheer willpower." — Soli J. Sorabjee, on Palkhivala's schooldays He studied at Master's Tutorial High School, then at St. Xavier's College, Bombay, where he completed a Master's degree in English Literature — a fact that helps explain the elegance of his later prose and oratory. In his younger days he even played the violin reasonably well, though music never became a lasting passion. Remarkably, the law was not his first choice. Palkhivala applied for a lecturer's post at Bombay University and, to his lasting regret at the time, the position went to someone else. With most other academic doors closed to him, he enrolled at Government Law College, Bombay. Sorabjee called it destiny: "Had Palkhivala got the lecturer's post, we would have had a brilliant professor but the world of law and public life would have been a loser." Palkhivala remained so grateful to the young woman who won that l